


the holly bears a berry as red as any blood

by tomato_greens



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the twenty-first century no one believed in God or if they did they believed in a God Steve had never met, a God who liked music played on electric guitars by preachers in tight pants, a God who wore leather jackets to appeal to the young. Steve wore a leather jacket, too, out of habit. Unfortunately the jacket also made him appeal to the young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. o tidings of comfort and joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nautilicious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilicious/gifts), [Querulousgawks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/gifts), [sinsense](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinsense/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1934 / 1943 / 2012.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With love, to [nautilicious](http://nautilicious.tumblr.com)!

In the bad old days, most years there wasn’t a tree. Well, what use was a tree without a feast on the table beside it and real wrapped presents under it? So of course they didn’t have one: its absence was a small indignity among the host of indignities Steve was forced to endure on a daily basis. For one thing he was short and phlegmatic, and for another, the nuns at school didn’t like his attitude, so really the lack of a tree was the least of his worries. Besides, he assured his mother, he’d read that a Christmas tree was at its heart a pagan symbol, and he thought he ought to stay away from those seeing as he was already thought a heathen, so really she’d better say nothing more about it because she was already compromising Steve’s eternal soul by the very mention of the thing.

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Bucky,” Sarah Rogers replied, but though Steve’s heart flipped over in dread all she meant was Bucky was the cleverer of the two. Steve’s eternal soul had in fact already been compromised last summer precisely due to Bucky’s cleverness or at least the cleverness of his fingers—not that Sarah Rogers should know about any of that—not that Steve was proud of his tarnished soul—not that the indignity of his pants around his ankles was something he was likely to forget any time soon, and God couldn’t forget if Steve couldn’t, so better he stay away from even the suggestion of heathendom.

In the twenty-first century no one believed in God or if they did they believed in a God Steve had never met, a God who liked music played on electric guitars by preachers in tight pants, a God who wore leather jackets to appeal to the young. Steve wore a leather jacket, too, out of habit. Unfortunately the jacket also made him appeal to the young. This was presumably why, when he came out of his motorcycle-induced fugue state and found himself outside of Our Lady of Fatima in no other place than Elizabeth, New Jersey, he looked down and saw he’d grown a second head.

“Hello,” he said to the second head, which had a thick dark braid coiled around it and was about knee height.

“Hi,” said the head shyly. “My name is Blanca Mendoza.”

“Hello,” he repeated.

“You’re Captain America?”

Steve hesitated, then—she was a _child_ —nodded.

The head grew some arms and legs and offered a small hand up to him. She was probably about five. He took the hand and let her lead him inside the church. He had never been inside before but that was the beauty of Catholicism; he knew where everything would be, the priestless altar, Christ resplendent in his eternal agony, pews in two strong-lined rows, dotted with knee rests that were still kicked down. In the bad old days, Mr. Mullryan, who always sat next to them and who in seventy years’ retrospect had even then a prurient interest in Sarah Rogers, refused on principle to return the knee rest to its rightful place because they were all going to come back next week and use them again. God may not have liked sloth but you couldn’t argue the efficiency of the thing.

“Blanca!” hissed a young woman in the present. She was hunched over the altar, gathering up snowy white linens and tucking them carefully into a large plastic tub. “You said you’d stay where I could see you! Get over here!”

Blanca let go of Steve’s hand and patted his knuckles. “Laura volunteered to clean the dirty stuff this week.” She leaned in, took on a conspiratorial tone. “You have to be careful because even the washcloths might have the Precious Body and Blood of Christ on them.”

“Stop talking and get over here before I tell Mom!” Laura insisted. Her voice echoed in irritated ripples around the nave, bouncing between the fluted columns and up into the facets of the ceiling. They were painted blue, Steve noted with interest. It was to his eyes slightly the wrong shade, too bright, appropriate perhaps at Easter but far too cheerful next to Christ’s open mouth. (No; he looked again; Christ’s mouth wasn’t open, and his face wasn’t streaked in mud, and they weren’t huddled in the gray-black forests of France as the doomed night stretched out ahead; they were in New York City. No; Elizabeth, New Jersey—he’d taken his motorcycle out, he’d needed to clear his head. In a frankly unbelievable turn of events he somehow hadn’t noticed the Holland Tunnel.) Equally likely: his memory had like an old photograph faded and curled up at the corners until he didn’t know what he thought he knew.

“Well, I have to go,” Blanca said. “Bye.”

“Goodbye,” Steve answered solemnly.

“What have I told you about talking to strange men,” Laura rasped at Blanca, clearly not caring whether Steve heard, holding her arms open for Blanca to run into. “You have be careful! He looks like a freak! He could be homeless!”

“He’s not homeless, he’s Captain America.”

“Yeah, right, Blanca, and another thing—”

Steve looked away from their reunion. In another life it might have been touching. Meanwhile Our Lady of Fatima smelled of cheapish frankincense, the same smell that used to give him asthma attacks during Sunday service. Strike two in hell’s favor, according to the nuns, but the lungs felt as out of Steve’s control as his attitude.

He slunk into a pew. Our Lady of Fatima’s parish was clearly not a wealthy one, but everything had been done up for Christmas, pine boughs along the backs of the pews and at least two dozen red poinsettias crowded together under the altar and the pulpit. They gave the hall a festive air. The nuns would surely have disapproved.

Reigning above the whole room was the Crucifix. From back here, the crown of thorns was just a series of dark blurry shadows. The nails too. Christ’s face was rigid with wooden calm underneath its suffering. If Steve squinted, the look could have meant almost anything: lament, pain, ecstasy. The mouth was closed. Steve didn’t know what he had been thinking.

_(—yes he did—_

_—Italy; December, 1943 —_

_—Steve’s head in Bucky’s lap—_

_—Bucky with his arms flung wide—_

_—their mouths open—)_

“Sir,” said Laura, who was now standing in the aisle. Her face was scrunched up in irritation, and she looked younger this close, maybe sixteen. “You can pray a little more if you want but then you have to leave. I’m supposed to lock the church up behind me.”

“Lock the church?” Steve repeated.

Laura gave him an incredulous look. “Uh, so people don’t steal stuff?”

“People wouldn’t steal out of a church,” Steve protested, but they would; of course they would. He had, and more than once. Piety was all well and good but what was the use of starving? The nuns had all taken a vow of poverty, but Steve never made anyone promises about staying poor. Everyone said suffering made you into a better person, but by any measure Steve had suffered and each time he came out worse.

In the bad old days there had been a tree, once, that his mother had been given by Mr. Mullryan before he finally tried to take liberties and she punched him in the nose. No one was wealthy in Brooklyn in 1934, and neither was Mr. Mullryan, but he had no children and he owned his own butcher shop and his flat, which sat above the shop, had warm running water, so by Steve’s account he was rolling in it.

“It’s vulgar to talk about other people’s money,” Sarah Rogers chastised, and then let out a little giddy shriek. She pressed a hand to her mouth, but it was too late. She giggled again.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, overwhelmed by all six feet of spruce, and together they strung up garlands of popcorn and then the set of sterling silver coffee spoons, given to his mother as a wedding present, and then they looted her sewing basket for buttons and ribbon. An absurdity, by the end, but Steve loved it, dragged Bucky— “Aw, Steve, come on, again? That things’s ridiculous—hey, hey! All right, all right, no need to pull at me like that!”—to look at it on three separate occasions.

“So are you done or what?”

Steve blinked back to himself. Our Lady of Fatima. Elizabeth, New Jersey. 2012. “Yeah, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Thanks,” Laura sniffed.

“Our Father who art in heaven,” he huffed out as he headed for the doors, but he couldn’t finish. The name _wasn’t_ hallowed, not anymore, not like when he’d been young and had the fear of God and nuns in him still. Oh, he had fears, sure: going to bed tonight, waking up tomorrow, all this goddamned self-pity he carried around like a fucking millstone—

“Merry Christmas, Captain America!” yelled Blanca from the front steps of the church.

Steve squared his shoulders. He practiced his smile, quick. _Still got it_ , he thought, and he turned around and waved; Blanca looked thrilled. “Merry Christmas,” he called, and then started his bike and headed down Clarkson Avenue, towards 278, towards the Holland Tunnel.


	2. in the bleak midwinter a stable-place sufficed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1934.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With affection, for [querulousgawks](http://querulousgawks.tumblr.com)!

Sarah Rogers was a saint, according to Mr. Mullryan the lecherous butcher. You couldn't trust a word that came out of the man's mouth but even a broken clock told the truth twice a day; well, so Bucky's ma claimed. Whatever the source the sainthood seemed undeniable––"Taking care of those poor deranged souls all day, taking care of that poor boy all night," Bucky's ma would tsk, "it's a wonder Mrs. Rogers isn't beatified yet." 

Not that Bucky was all fired up about the scientific method, but this seemed illogical to him. Sarah Rogers spent most of '32, '33, and '34 working with the recently lobotomized, and no matter how wild they had been before the procedure they were by all accounts as deranged as a doornail afterwards. Being a widow and an immigrant and of course a Catholic to boot, Sarah wasn't given to complaints, but once, when she and Bucky had been keeping vigil over Steve's second case of no-longer-walking pneumonia in six months, she sighed to him, "They're all just so _quiet._ "

"I'm finally starting to understand why you stick around with Steve," Bucky cracked. 

"If I weren't such a risk to Steve I'd ask to move back to the TB ward," she said, maybe compelled by some internal force, clearly loathe to admit it. Women! Bucky didn't know how to respond to that, and Sarah must not have known how to respond to his silence because she patted his hand and smiled at him. "He's lucky to have a friend like you."

With a brogue like hers, platitudes took on a new truth. Of course eventually she was transferred back to the TB ward and by '36 she was in the ground herself, but he couldn't know that then, with her calloused hand on his calloused hand, with him still in his dirty coveralls from the machine shop and enveloped entirely by her warm maternal smell--enhanced by the quarter-ounce of real department store perfume Steve had bought for her last Christmas, a whopping $2.25. Where had Steve gotten the money? both Sarah and Bucky had wondered, separately at first as it turned out, then putting their heads together by Boxing Day. But in the end neither of them had asked. Such was the power Steve held over them.

"St. Agnes, look kindly upon Steve." Sarah's hand was still on Bucky's. Did this implicate him in the prayer? Was prayer a thing that could travel by proxy, a contagion? An airborne illness, Bucky thought, and had to cough so he wouldn't fall into hysterics. The Barneses had been Irish three or four generations ago and they were still Catholic if napping through the homily every Sunday counted as Catholic, but his mother was a bona fide Yankee, so by and large Bucky was uncomfortable with what you might call outward expressions of faith. The Rogerses weren't like that. "Just off the boat and into God's hands," Sarah explained them, because she'd had Steve a month early, three days after she got off Ellis Island and only a few weeks before Joseph Rogers got himself blown up in the trenches. Or maybe it had been mustard gas; Bucky was never too clear on the details. It wasn't his business, seeing as he had a father who was alive and snoring at St. Peter's once a week. 

The unspoken thing, the thing that Sarah probably did not know but terrifyingly could know, was that Bucky and Steve had made time together--"May he find consolation and convalescence in your healing presence," Sarah murmured--not often, once or twice when Steve was feeling down or Bucky was mad at his boss and couldn't get it out. Steve had a knack for getting it out. 

Now that Steve was almost seventeen Bucky'd sat him down and talked about adulthood, expectations, the future he'd planned out for them (two wives, two houses, four or five kids strung between them, a normal future, maybe even a middle class future); Bucky had a whole year on Steve and had grown up with two parents and until Black Thursday a father in the advertising business, so he knew what it took to get there, what a Chrysler Imperial looked like fresh off the line and from the inside, the perfect mechanism of the pistons, the slats and tubes of the intercooler, the hand-stitching that had to hold it all together. Hence the machine shop. Hence the wife and kids. But he still worried, when Sarah looked at him, that her eyes alit by her love for Steve could see through his layers of bullshit. "Amen," she finished.

"Amen," Bucky echoed. It seemed impolite not to. 

"You're a good boy, Buck." Sarah patted his hand again. Mr. Mullryan the lecherous butcher was right; she was a saint. "Keep him company, will you?"

Having about as much affection for sentimentality as for religion, Bucky was surprised to hear himself say, "Always." It was the right thing to say, though, because Sarah smiled and got up to get dressed for work, looking as unworried as she ever did when Steve was laid up in bed. Bucky had always had a talent for saying the right thing to women, provided they didn't know him too well. Sarah knew him too well, liked him anyway; the apple didn't fall far from the tree, Bucky supposed.

The door to the apartment shut and Steve fluttered awake. "Ma?" he croaked.

Bucky shifted into Steve's line of sight. The fever had made his cheeks very pink. "No, you're stuck with me."

"A poor substitute," Steve coughed, but there was no vinegar in it. He was very ill.

"I could never compete with a lady like your ma," Bucky agreed.

"Yeah, you ain't half as classy." 

Bucky couldn't argue with that, so he didn't try. He patted Steve's leg the way Sarah had patted his hand. Firm. Kind. Faintly impersonal. Steve grabbed his hand. So much for that. "You want me to stay a while?" he choked out. 

Steve nodded, eyes drifting closed again. With his cheeks so pink he looked sainted. No, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight historical liberties have been taken regarding lobotomies and the Chrysler Imperial.


	3. i sing the birth was born tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014 / 2015.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With longtime internet affection, for [sinsense](http://sinsensory.tumblr.com)!

When he first came back to himself, it was not optimal to be touched. It was—tolerable, if it was necessary: when he cut his foot and needed stitches, Dr. Staedtler’s dry fingertips were an acceptable counterpoint to the sting of the needle; when Tony Stark [code named Iron Man] installed his new arm, he and Dr. Banner [code named The Hulk] had to hold his shoulder in place while they screwed the new prosthetic base into the old Soviet-made socket. Sometimes, after he was no longer a weapon but before he had become human, Steven Rogers [code named Captain America] would get a sharp crease between his eyebrows and reach a hand out as if instinctually. When this happened, he let Steve Rogers put the hand on his shoulder, because it seemed like a thing Steve Rogers needed to do.

After he becomes a human [code named Bucky Barnes] again, a fleshy bleeding creature with snot and stomach bile and corns on his toes, he discovers he dislikes some textures: shag carpet on his bare hands or feet is not acceptable. Cotton and wool are wearable but synthetic knits are not. He likes the smoothness of tupperware lids and dislikes the fake plastic crown molding in Steve’s post-war apartment. It is very strange, to look at an object and want to touch it.

Steve, of course, does not know he has become a human because Steve has mistaken him for human all along. The first time Steve reaches out to him, after [code named Bucky] has begun to thaw out, [code named Bucky] tries to bear it. He lasts for only a few seconds before his head fills with white noise and he says, “No! No, I—” Then he has to run to the bathroom. He does not get there in time, so he vomits in the hallway.

“That’s the way it goes, sometimes,” he overhears Sam Wilson [code named Falcon] telling Steve as [code named Bucky] perches over his own vomit. Steve is in the kitchen and Sam Wilson must be on speakerphone. It is thoughtless of Steve to put it on speakerphone, but then it was also thoughtless to refuse Steve’s shoulder grab. One for one. Wait; no; according to [code named Bucky]’s therapist Dr. Huang, this is not a healthy way to keep track of relationships. Dr. Huang has messy dark hair and wears shirts with tiny pink flowers all over them, so she looks kind, but she is what Steve’s mother used to call _a tough nut to crack_. [code named Bucky] tries again. It is thoughtless of Steve to put it on speakerphone; he is probably upset, so it is understandable that he is being thoughtless. It was also thoughtless of [code named Bucky] to refuse Steve’s shoulder grab without explaining why. _Try using words_ , Dr. Huang says. “You gotta give him space, man,” Sam Wilson continues in the present.

“I know,” Steve replies, sounding grim. “I thought we were, I don’t know, getting somewhere.”

Sam insists, “You are. Listen, anything he does now that involves him, like, expressing a preference? That’s the goal. That’s been the goal all along.”

“I know.”

“I’m not so sure you do—”

A beep. Steve must have hung up. Typical, typical. A sigh, sharp like a hiss from a punctured tire, escapes from the kitchen. Steve is one manipulative motherfucker, [code named Bucky] thinks in exasperation. The hallway has begun to smell sour, but [code named Bucky] cannot make himself get up and find a mop. It seems easier to stay here. Being a human is difficult. The bargain he has struck with himself is that, if he stays still, time stays paused.

The chair in the kitchen scrapes back. It is likely that the furrow has returned between Steve’s eyebrows; it isn’t pleasurable to see it there, but Dr. Huang keeps telling [code named Bucky] that it is not his job to make Steve happy. A previous version of Bucky would probably find this laughably ignorant, but [code named Bucky] is not in a position to argue with a woman like Dr. Huang. There have been so many previous versions of [code named Bucky], anyway, it is very difficult to sift through each one’s opinions. He must make each judgment anew. He does not like shag carpet. He likes the color green. Steve is a good man and it is not [code named Bucky]’s job to make him happy.

“Aw, Buck,” says Steve. “Let’s get this cleaned up, pal. You want to go wash your face?”

[code named Bucky] realizes his ears are hot and his mouth is sticky. “Yes,” he says, and stands. His knees shake a little. Pathetic. Wait; no; understandable. Humans are allowed to be sick and they are also allowed to be tired. He is human. QED.

“You head on into the bathroom while I mop this up,” Steve prompts gently.

“Okay,” [code named Bucky] says, and goes. The sink runs. He remembers what they taught him during the inpatient program:  
      1) Take the washcloth off of the towel rack. (Bucky’s washcloth is green.)  
      2) Run the hot water. Check the temperature with the back of the hand or the wrist.  
      3) With one corner of the washcloth, wash from the inner corner of the eye to the outer. Then repeat. Another corner, another eye.  
      4) Use soap to make suds. Wash the face, the neck, the ears. Rinse with clean water.

[code named Bucky] had not closed the door, but Steve knocks on the frame. “Looks good out here,” he says. “You okay?”

The feeling of a newly clean face is a pleasurable one. Being asked by Steve if he is well is also pleasurable. “Yeah,” he says. He looks over at Steve’s hand on the door frame and reaches out one of his metal fingers to touch it gently. _One Mississip-pi._ That is all he can handle. He puts his arm down and turns back around. The final step is to wring out the washcloth and put it back on the rack. "I’m okay.“

Steve is smiling at him, eyes meeting [code named Bucky]’s in the bathroom mirror. “Good. Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to come hang out with me on my brand new [fanblog](http://tomatowrites.tumblr.com)!


End file.
